Rhythm Destruction is a rhythm & shoot'em up that aims to combine the best of both genres. Blast and maneuver your way through perilous stages filled with numerous enemies, obstacles and unique boss encounters. Stay on beat to rack up the highest score possible and compete against others on the global leaderboards!

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Reviews

“Rhythm Destruction is a fun and unique game, and its varying challenge levels make it an appealing title for casual and core players alike”
4/5 – Gamezebo

“On display is some of the best manic/bullet hell gameplay I have seen in a while: akin to Ikaruga or the Touhou games”
4/5 – Unigamesity

“Overall Rhythm Destruction is a lot of fun. As innovative as it is challenging, there's plenty to like about it.”
7/10 – GameReactor

About This Game

Rhythm Destruction is a rhythm & shoot'em up that aims to combine the best of both genres. Blast and maneuver your way through perilous stages filled with numerous enemies, obstacles and unique boss encounters. Stay on beat to rack up the highest score possible and compete against others on the global leaderboards!

Enemies and objects in Rhythm Destruction are destroyed via timed key presses that go along with the beat of the music. The hand crafted stages are filled with many obstacles, traps, and plenty of bullets that make for unrelenting action. Each stage also includes a unique boss encounter that will put all of your skills to the test.

Rhythm Destruction tracks high scores across all game types and stages. It also features a scrolling feed to update you on whats happening around the community in real time in regards to new records, high scores and game news.

10 challenging and diverse stages

Pumping soundtrack provided by 'Oscillator X' and others

Leaderboards for all game modes

Receive live updates on high scores, community news and more with the 'RD Feed'

First off, I really like rhythm games and smups/bulett hell games.Was exited to try off this mix of genres, but it does not work for me.To many things to keep your eyes on.

Steer your ship away from enemies and bullets at the same time you have to keep your eyes on the rhythm and time your keystroke, also there's a distance bonus to the enemy when you do the keystroke (the closer you are, better the score).

To top it off there's even another thing to keep your eyes on, that is after if you sucessfully matched the correct keystroke it gives you feedback if you where to fast or to late pressing the key. Though is is optional but nessersary if you want to get a good score, it would have been a nice feature if it wasnt to much other things to keep your eyes on.

Another thing is that if you miss a rhythm keystroke, that enemy is not destroyed witch in turn makes it even harder as that's more enemies to keep track of/avoid.

Rhythm Destruction is a bullet hell rhythm game developed by Curious Panda. Yes that’s right, a bullet hell rhythm game. I’m a huge bullet hell shooter fan and love games such as Danmaku Unlimited or Mars Matrix. I’m also a huge rhythm game fan and love games such as Dance Dance Revolution or Beatmania IIDX. One would think that a combination of the two would be the greatest game for me.

The game hits all the proper marks for a bullet hell shooter. The controls are tight and responsive, bullets are easy to see and hazards are easily identifiable, and bosses pull some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bullet curtains. All par for the course for the genre. On the rhythm side the music is pretty good, button combinations and their rhythms are somewhat hard to discern at first but after a while it gets easier to understand. As a bullet hell shooter on it’s own, the game does well. As a rhythm game on it’s own, the game does well. Combining the two causes some issues.

Gameplay at first is very jarring. The player can move his ship around the screen, however the player cannot manually shoot at enemies. Enemies appear on the screen with an arrow above them and a colored ring that slowly collapses onto it. The ring color indicates what kind of note that command is (quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth, note, etc) and the amount of time it takes the ring to close indicates when to press that command. Hitting the correct arrow on the correct beat makes the ship fire on the enemy. Missing the command allows the enemy to remain on the screen and fire upon the player until the player passes them. Some enemies that spawn will not have arrows on them, making them indestructible but still able to fire upon the player. Players can dodge bullets and enemies in typical bullet hell fashion.

Here is where the gameplay becomes a bit convoluted. As I mentioned earlier the skillsets for both rhythm games and bullet hell games require a lot of concentration to not die, combining the two in this fashion makes the game artificially hard. You have to pay attention to which enemies are firing on you and what pattern the bullets are making, as well as pay attention to the enemies with arrows and hit the commands in the correct order. Enemies that are currently firing on you aren’t necessarily enemies that currently have commands on them, which means you will either be hit by a bullet as you try to complete a command, or you will miss a command because you are avoiding bullets.

While it doesn’t do anything bad about both genres, it doesn’t do both necessarily well, and there are other games that do either one better than this one. If you are a lover of both bullet hell games and rhythm games or want to try a pretty original concept, I would suggest buying the game.

When compared to one another, the two genres that Rhythm Destruction tries to meld don’t initially appear to be in any way compatible. But when you look at both from a distance, the similarities become readily apparent. Rhythm Destruction takes the reflexive nature of both rhythm games, a la Guitar Hero or DDR, and attempts to mix it with the frantic pace of a top-down bullet hell shooter. Both genres require quick reflexes and the ability to memorize extensive patterns to succeed, and together could come together to craft a satisfying culmination of two otherwise disparate styles. Unfortunately, Rhythm Destruction is not a quality example of what could be an exciting new alternative to the more standard rhythmically-inclined titles.

Rhythm Destruction looks like a standard bullet hell game when played, but rather than face insurmountable odds in the way of thousands of pink death pellets, you typically only have to worry about crashing into obstacles that you can’t shoot. In order to account for the rhythm aspect, your ability to freely fire upon enemies has been removed entirely, in favor of specific button presses timed to the beat of electronica style music. This means that you’re often forced to maneuver through miniature mine fields of enemies and obstacles that would have taken mere moments to obliterate in a typical bullet hell title, all because the game decided that these enemies were not worthy of a rhythmic tap of the x-button on your gamepad. Failing to end an enemy that did earn that right may stick you in an unavoidable head on collision with them, reducing your limited life pool. Some of these issues, I could forgive, if only because the point of both genres is to test your memory as well as your reflexes. But your inability to freely deal with the limited enemy force isn’t my big problem with this game.

The best rhythm games are separated from the rest by a very, very particular gameplay aspect that many titles, like Rhythm Destruction, just don’t get, and that’s player feedback. Looking at a title like Bit.Trip Runner, one of the most satisfying things about doing well in that game is the emphasis on your actions and performance in relation to the music. Acquire collectible pickups and increase your score while avoiding death results in an ever evolving music beat, as does performing the correct action add a note to the rhythm. Failing to perform adequately affects the music, and furthers the desire to be absolutely perfect. This is an example of rewarding feedback for the player, and provides a driving force to continue against ever increasing difficulty. RD does not have this. Hell, it doesn’t have any feedback aside from a score counter. And that, beyond the button taps that don’t quite sync with the music, or enemies that you can’t kill, is what kills any enjoyment I could have had for this game. Failing to hit the correct button results in a loss of score, or, if you’re in a narrow hallway, the loss of a life, and that’s it. The music never changes to fit your actions, and in a game about keeping a beat, that is unacceptable.

While RD is poor example of variety in a couple of stagnating genres, I love the idea it presents. I can only hope that the concept is picked up by another developer.

Rhythm Destruction.Made by Curious Panda Game, two man indie studio.It is their first game, so i guess i can forgive some faults.

The game. Runs good- 60FPS ingame, and I really dig the look of it. Also, kinda fun.But, the resolution options are only 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10. No actual sizes. So that is kind of wierd.

The fighting mechanic is based on music, the beat goes down you have to press the displayed arrow key, and done. Enemy dead. Very QTE-like if you ask me, but it is strangely fun.The music.. It feels like it's from the 90's. Straight from some europian late night party. Heck, the second level song is a definition of that era's music.

And the final verdict? If i had to choose, i'd go with yes.It has leaderboards, challenges- things that can lenghten the play time. The game definetly has the feel of good game. Now, if only it had online/local coop, and it would tolerate alt+tabbing without crashing every time, we would have a great game.

Let me get something out of the way now: While I personally do not reccomend this game (for reasons I'll get to in this review), that does not mean you won't like it or that it's a bad game. That out of the way, here's what I think:

The concept for the game is actually pretty cool -- a scrolling shoot'em'up (shmup) with rhythm game mechanics -- hitting directional buttons to the beat of a song to destroy enemies. I was actually really excited to give it a try, until I discovered something unfortunate: The game just doesn't play well with my visual impairment. While generally speaking my vision doesn't affect me too badly, for this one the game was nearly unplayable after the first stage. My problem? The rhythmic inputs are shown over the ships you're shooting, and when gaming I have a very focused center of vision that comes from being nearsighted to three inches. I just couldn't see what buttons I needed to push and when. "Oh hey, there's a circle. I can hit that ship." But next thing I know, there was another note to hit somewhere else on the screen and I completely missed it because my vision was focused on another part of the screen. So from the one stage I completed multiple times and the portion of the second, let me say that the music is good, as would be expected from a game of this genre. The graphics look really nice too, and I liked the idea of Hyper Mode shown in the tutorial section. I just wish I had the eyesight to give this game the fair chance it deserves.

Possible suggestion? Put button input prompts as an optional behind-the-ship background flash. That way I can watch and maneuver the ship while still being able to get the gameplay experience, and I can watch the glorious destruction of ships in what peripheral vision I have. Granted, I'm just one person, so that's just a wish from someone that really wanted to love the game.

In closing, while I personallycannot reccomend the game due to not being able to play it, take my review with a whole package of salt. What I could enjoy I enjoyed quite a lot.

As a Rhythm Game player i couldn't try this game out. I discovered it 3 months ago and found it quite original.The game itself is very well made, considering it's coming from a recent Indie company, game patterns are intuitive in the first two tiers and challenging in the last three, making it very difficult to master properly. It is difficult at first but with a bit of practice and some knowledge in Shmups it can become a very good game to play.The music is amazing: lots of memories came out when i listened to all those ITG/PIU songs, not to mention the superior F-777 DLC, which is well structured and fun (although not as difficult as Machine Rhythm, which is literally a Nightmare to pass through). Though the songlist is a bit scarce (10 in total) they'll hopefully release some new stages in due time.

While a good game, it does have some minor flaws but they're not gamebreaking nor makes the game unplayable, so they can be ignored.

If you're into Music games AND Shmups, definitely try this out, it's worth the price.

Ehh, I just can't play this game. Normal difficulty scales up too fast and has way too much focus on the shmup elements (which is something I'm always awful at) and is far too unforgiving with only 4 lives and no way to gain lives back. Casual is pointless because the actual difficulty of the level is scaled down; it'd be helpful if it was just infinite lives, but nope. Some notes are also off the beat and the timing for the perfect hit is pretty strict too so. Not necessarily a bad game, just one that I can't find any enjoyment from. Retro/Grade got everything right where this one gets it wrong (good balance between rhythm/shmup, forgiving without being easy, tons of levels of difficulty, perfectly synced music guaranteed). Not that it's perfect either but this just isn't something I have interest in investing any more time in... meh. Really wanted to like this one, too, but it's just not for me.

I had seen it floating around a few sites and was on the fence about buying because of some of the negative reviews on the Steam page (Which I really need to stop reading). Anyway I caught it in a bundle this week and have been a little blown away by it.

IMO the rhythm gameplay gels really well with SHMUP gameplay. It just feels nice to play.

I can imagine a lot of the negative comments would have come from the die hard SHMUP community becuase this is very different to the norm. If you were expecting Dodonpachi then it maybe a bit of a shock but my advice is stick with it becuase it's really fun!

Ok. I've played a lot of rhythm games. This looks completely different. First of all - do NOT look at it like it's a regular shm-up. I's not. Rhythm Destruction is a shm-up inspired rhythm game. Like your regular OSU or Guitar Hero but with difficulties: you got to dodge stuff. Not "bad notes" or "gray blocks", more complex stuff like enemy attacks/platforms/enemies themselves. I've checked only couple of songs - not my kind of music, but they were ok. If the devs are interested in marketing - wait for tons of DLC's from different indie musicians (I suppose). Achievements are great. Ingame challenges are great. They make you raise your skill. You can't just 100% the game in 4 hours. The only things that I'm not ok with is the keybord controls. They're a bit sloppy for me. (Will check on gamepad. Does it support gamepad, by the way? :D ) Not a diamond, not a must-have, but a fun little game that may become a gem if polished well (I mean: ADD SOME MORE MUSIC IN DIFFERENT GENRES, WILL YA?) Cheers!

When you play it you might notice theres no main menu music. Kind of weird for a game about music, right? Theres music in the stage menu though.

The graphics and models are pretty basic. I had to restart the second level to make sure i wasn’t doing the mission again because they looked the same. But later levels seemed to have a bit more variety

There was a tutorial. But the game crashed and I couldn’t find it again. So I had to figure out the game myself. Which was a little tricky

Anyway, the game has stages. And it turns out that you fire your weapons at targets by pressing the arrow keys or equivalent at the right time. Doing so in time to the music and being closer to the enemies or something like that scores more points. The game seems to tell you when that right time is by using shrinking green circles around targets. At the same time you need to navigate through obstacles and avoid enemy fire and or crashing into other ships. You won’t feel a connection between the action in the music at first. But this changes as the maneuvers get more complex in later levels. Also you don’t seem to be able to pause the game

Initially you are prompted to select a controller input when you first start the game. Gamepad and mouse are options. I chose keyboard. I couldn’t find the options to change to another input later though. Theres a resolution option. But you can’t actually change the resolution. Aspect ration is in it's place for some reason.

Theres not really a lot of sound in game. Which can feel a bit wierd. But each stage has different music. What can I say about about the music? It’s not really the type really I would usually listen to. However you might like it.

In the third mission I was killed by the boss and failed the mission. The boss then exploded and I got a five star rating. Not sure how that works. The game records high scores. And there are leaderboards for each stage.

I played for almost an hour and got up to like the 4th level. The games is fun Not in the same was as my old favourite from the 90’s Tyrian. But it feels a lot more fresh. Right now I would choose it over the recent humans must die. But I just feel that the gameplay will probably become increasingly sadomasochistic. I could probably squeeze a few hours more out of it at least.

The soundtrack is awful, you cannot add your own tracks, and overall it feels pretty much like a badly revamped version of a much better Xenon 2 from 1989. Except that in that game, you could actually shoot stuff without worrying about your "rythm" being in sync with the game.

Now, the idea per se is awesome, but the music feels like it has been ripped off some obscure '90 club your parents didn't want you to go to, and the lack of a: "Let me add my own" option kinda deprives this game of any real charm.

Visually, it is what you'd expect of a mid 2000's game or a more recent low-budget production: it ain't too bad, but somehow feels "wrong". As for the gameplay itself, it's choppy and doesn't "flow" with the music, to whom I would dare to say brings no connection whatsoever.

If you REALLY feel the need to play this game, get it in a bundle or on an hard sale, and even then double think your choice. With a few thousand patches it might still be salvageable, but at its current state it just makes you feel like you could have spent your time more productively by learning about the love life of Platypuses.

it makes a bad rhythm game because its consitantly taking your eyes off your beat targets. it makes a bad bullet hell game because you can't shoot targets when it would be logical to do so. Also, you can't watch the bullets because you're always looking for the beat targets....

I can see why people would be into this mixup of genres. But it doesn't do enough service to either one to make it worth while. I fell like the rhythm aspects of the game are getting in the way of a shooter.

Great game! I've been playing this since release, and it has proved to be one of the more challenging rhythm games out there. I hope to see more from Curious Panda Games in the future! Keep up the great work!

I was a pretty big fan of rhythm games like DDR in the past, but hadn't really played much in recent years. Everything felt more or less the same. Rhythm Destruction caught my attention with its unlikely mix of bullet hell and rhythm. I'm happy to say that this seemingly odd pairing works surprisingly well!

Rhythm Destruction is fun, challenging and addicting! I also recently purchased the dlc pack and am very happy with it. The Dark Angel song is especially fun and super intense! The music is cool and brings me back to the glory days of rhythm games. Definitely recommend giving this one a play.

I've been a fan of rhythm games for many years but this is a completely new take on the series. I would say it is more rhythm than shump but not by much. If you are great with rhythm games, don't expect to be awesome at this one right away, it really puts your brain to use in the multitasking department. Having to dodge tons of bullets and objects while trying to get the notes can be tough but very rewarding. The are leaderboards and challenages for you to do so there is a good amount of replayability on this game.

I've had the game since the kickstarter and have loved every min of it. Not many rhythm based games come out so it is nice to see a great one. Very happy to see it on steam so the install base grows and more DLC can be made.

This one is worth a look. A combination of rhythm game/top down space shooter. I was skeptical, but it works. The soundtrack is vaguely reminiscent of early 2000s Bemani, but is a lot more on the dark/melodic trance side, less on the happy hardcore.

It's short, and it looks like they're monitizing this by additional song packs, which...I'll probably be picking up at least the first one if the core levels are any representation.